I've noticed something weird about DPI 15.3. As I use it, it slowly stops recognizing more and more commands until eventually I have to restart the program. Then it works again (for a little bit). The same thing happens with knowbrainer – sometimes, KB commands will stop being recognized until I restart it. I also had this problem in DPI 14, so I'm disappointed that it's still happening now that I've upgraded.

This doesn't happen consistently. Sometimes I can use Dragon and knowbrainer for a couple hours without noticing any weird loss of functionality. But man, it happens a lot. Anyone have any advice for fixing this?

Originally posted by: Alan Cantor It sounds like you may have inadvertently invoked "dictation mode," which means Dragon ignores commands. Next time Dragon stops responding to commands, say "switch to dictation and commands mode" and see if that fixes the problem.

Appreciate the reply! I don't think that's the answer. The problem happens a lot, and I almost never enter dictation mode. Also, whenever commands stop working, it's never every command at once. It's something more like this: I'll be plugging along, doing my thing in chrome, when BAM! I say "Address Bar", but the software will no longer execute the command. Or I'll say something like "Mouse Click 1 2 3" and the thing I'm trying to click won't be clicked. Even if I change the context, like opening a new tab and then saying "Address Bar", or going to a new link and THEN saying a "Mouse Click", Dragon will still refuse to execute the command.

At least until I restart Dragon (or sometimes knowbrainer). Then, magically, it will be able to execute the command I was trying to do.

So over the course of a few hours, I lose access to more and more commands until finally I have no choice but to restart DPI. I could be wrong, but it seems to happen in loads of different applications – chrome, word, and even global commands. It's really weird.

Originally posted by: dilligence This sounds like a corruption of your user profile. Did you try creating a new one?

Nice to finally talk to you! I've been a lurker for a couple months and I've noticed you post a lot of helpful stuff thanks for posting the ergonomic command set. I used that for a while until knowbrainer was given to me.

I haven't tried making a new profile yet in DPI 15.3. But when I had DPI 14, the problem I'm describing happened constantly in every profile I made. And over about three years, I think I went through roughly a dozen profiles for various reasons. I can try making a new DPI 15.3 profile, but it doesn't seem likely that'll fix the problem since all my profiles experience this.

And for the sake of more troubleshooting, I've already configured Dragon to avoid all its sand traps as Lunis puts it

It's easy to change modes by mistake. Next time the problem happens, review your recognition history to check whether Dragon recently interpreted something you said as, for example, "switch to dictation mode."

Sweet! Just yesterday, I was trying to figure out if Dragon had a recognition history I could access. That's really convenient, thanks! Truth be told, I still don't think the dictation mode is the problem, but next time this happens I'll pull up the history and check. Again, appreciate the help so far.

I'm getting the glitch right now – when I say "Close Tab" in chrome nothing happens, but when I say "press control w" then the tab will close. "Close Tab" was just working a few minutes ago. I checked my recognition history, and I haven't switched into dictation mode

Is it possible that the problem might be related to resource use? Does Dragon have a tendency to not execute commands when your computer is overworked?

Try saying Find Global Command <close tab> to verify and highlight the KnowBrainer Close Tab command. Note that the KnowBrainer sidebar doesn't need to be open. This will verify that the Close Tab command exists, verify that KnowBrainer 2017 is running and verify that KnowBrainer is working.

Originally posted by: Lunis OrcuttTry saying Find Global Command to verify and highlight the KnowBrainer Close Tab command. Note that the KnowBrainer sidebar doesn't need to be open. This will verify that the Close Tab command exists, verify that KnowBrainer 2017 is running and verify that KnowBrainer is working.

Yes, I'm able to successfully do that – most of the time at least!

Originally posted by: Scribe Have you tried working with Dragon without loading KnowBrainer? That way you could see if the problem still persisted. If it didn't, then you could start troubleshooting possible conflicts between it and Dragon.

I haven't tried that with DPI 15.3, but I've been having this problem since before I got knowbrainer. It happened with DPI 14 (with no additional software like KnowBrainer or DragonCapture or anything) for the 3 years I had it.

This is a bit of a stretch but we are thinking that your user profile may be partially corrupted. Try creating a 2nd profile for test purposes. If it works satisfactory, import your previous commands and vocabulary. See following:

1. Say manage vocabularies2. Click the Export button3. You will notice that the default is to save your vocabulary as a *Top which means you will see 5 different files. Ignore this because when you reverse the this process, to import your exploited vocabulary, you will only see one file.

This method preserves your pronunciations, deletions and additions which means you have exactly the same information from the previous profile but hopefully not the damage. Of course the damage may be in your vocabulary so there is no guarantee. If this is the case, exporting your vocabulary as a text file will be better. We simply have no way of knowing.

Also note that if you or Dragon is automatically running the Accuracy Tuning, remove that checkmark (in the DragonBar Options/Data tab). We do not like this feature and always recommend disabling it; except for end-users who are verbally disabled; like Pres. Trump

The problem of voice commands not working can have a lot of reasons and only a small fraction of these can be explained by a "partially corrupt" speaker profile.

For Dragon, there's no inherent difference between voice commands and dictation.

The only differentiation is a short pause before and after the command.

So if a command doesn't work, the first thing I'd check is if Dragon has recognized anything at all and if so, what. You can get this information using the recognition history.

If the words forming the command have been misrecognized, then - of course - the voice command can not fire.

If the words have been recognized correctly but somehow the pause before and after has not been recognized (e.g. because of some background noise), Dragon will treat the recognition as dictation. Depending on the current window, nothing will happen or Dragon will try to type the words.

If this is the case, you'll also find it in the recognition history because there will be no X in the "Command" column for that utterance.

You could also try enabling the old preview window. Then you can see a thick dark blue frame around the light yellow preview window every time a voice command has been recognized (in contrast to dictation, where you'll get a thin black border). That way you can see immediately if the command per se has been recognized.

In case the voice command has been recognized, the application that has registered the voice command should get notified. If you're working in Chrome, then probably the Dragon Chrome Plugin will get notified, but we've had reports from several of our customers that this plugin is not extremely stable, especially if you work in Chrome very extensively, have a lot of tabs open and have Dragon running for a longer time.

Could be some resource leak in the Plugin or the RIA service host. The description that more and more commands fail to work (and not suddenly none of them work anymore) seem to point in that direction.

But first of all you should find out exactly where the process of command recognition fails (once it does).

If commands are not recognized and simply restarting Dragon with the same speaker profile fixes the problem, then I strongly doubt that a corrupt speaker profile is the culprit.

It could even be the audio system building up noise during the day, interfering with silence recognition, but without further info it's really hard to tell.

Awesome! You caught me – I work in chrome pretty much all day with maybe 5 to 15 tabs open at any given time, and Microsoft Edge open at the same time with three or four tabs. The Dragon extension is enabled on both browsers but only on key websites, like Google's amazing texting app "messages for web." That being said, I keep those websites open all day, so we might be onto something here. Okay, here's how I'll try to implement your wonderful advice:

A) I'll keep an eye on the recognition history for a couple days and gather more data.

C) For the time being, I'm going to keep the Dragon web extension enabled on key websites and wait for the glitch to happen so I can see what pops up in my recognition history. But then! After it happens and I have that data, I'll disable the extension on those websites and see if my problem disappears completely.

Disabling or removing the Dragon extension, on any browser, is an all or nothing deal. When you disable the Dragon extension, you additionally need to close and re-launch your browser to take effect. If disabling the Dragon extension is helpful, you could optionally run Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (second-generation) and disabling the Dragon extension in 1 of those browsers.

Originally posted by: dudethatsmyrib Awesome! You caught me – I work in chrome pretty much all day with maybe 5 to 15 tabs open at any given time, and Microsoft Edge open at the same time with three or four tabs.

I've noticed a similar problem the new Microsoft Edge and with the old Google Chrome. I've pretty well switched away from using Google Chrome and now use Microsoft Edge almost exclusively, the reason being that Microsoft Edge is at least somewhat more stable.

I've been working all day in Microsoft Edge and am currently experiencing some of these same problems, just to show that the problem isn't limited to one person. I'm going to describe what's happening as I dictate this post.

I have 7 tabs — Yahoo Mail and 6 bilingual dictionary websites — going at the same time, and right now the Dragon extension is only effective in some of them. As is the case with you, the longer I work, the less Dragon works on certain websites. Sometimes Dragon stops working at all in Microsoft Edge until I restart it.

BTW, just now I dictated “restart it” and Dragon typed “restarted.” When I tried selecting “restarted” to correct it, nothing happened. Incidentally, I have a green dot in the Dragon bar for this website but not for Yahoo Mail. That's not unusual. Yahoo Mail usually doesn't support Select-and-Say.

I've also just noticed that some commands work on this website and other commands don't. For example, I first got “yahoo mail” and when I spoke the command “capitalize yahoo mail”, nothing happened. But when I manually selected “yahoo mail” and gave the command “cap that”, that command worked.

I checked Recognition History to see if the commands not recognized were identified as commands by Dragon. They weren't. There is no X in the command column by those commands. On the other hand, Dragon didn't type the commands as text, either. So Dragon correctly recognized the commands; it just didn't do anything.

To be clear, I work in a very quiet environment, and I've make sure to pause before giving a command.

I am now going to close and restart both Microsoft Edge and Dragon —|Dragon first, of course. Then I'll come back here and edit this post after again trying those commands that didn't work.

Edit: Well, that was a bust. Now I don't even have a green dot. I can dictate, but Select-and-Say isn't working at all, in any tab. This happens all too often.

The rule of thumb is to close applications that use Dragon extensions or add-ins 1st. Close Dragon last. Dragon hooks into extensions and add-ins so when you kill Dragon 1st, you run the risk of hanging whatever application is linked to Dragon. In other words, do it the other way around

We have Select-&-Say in our all of our 10 homepages (tabs).

If you don't see the green •, after launching Microsoft Edge, verify that the Dragon extension is enabled.

Originally posted by: Lunis OrcuttThe rule of thumb is to close applications that use Dragon extensions or add-ins 1st. Close Dragon last. Dragon hooks into extensions and add-ins so when you kill Dragon 1st, you run the risk of hanging whatever application is linked to Dragon. In other words, do it the other way around

We have Select-&-Say in our all of our 10 homepages (tabs). If you don't see the green •, after launching Microsoft Edge, verify that the Dragon extension is enabled.

Hi Lunis,

Thanks for the advice, but Dragon is always the last app I kill before putting my PC to sleep for the night and the first app I launch in the morning. I open all other apps by issuing verbal commands. That way, I'm sure that Dragon is active and any extensions have (hopefully) been loaded.

I just now got on the computer today, starting Dragon, then launching the new Microsoft Edge. I have verified that the Dragon extension is enabled. I don't have a green dot showing or Select-and-Say in any tab. I usually have Select-and-Say in the KnowBrainer forum.

To be clear, I dictated the first part of my above post yesterday with a green dot showing in this tab, but Select-and-Say was not working. When I closed Microsoft Edge and then exited Dragon yesterday and restarted Dragon, followed by Microsoft Edge, I no longer had a green dot in any tab and Select-and-Say was not working.

To further clarify, I checked to make sure that Select-and-Say is working in Microsoft Word, DragonPad, and WordPad. I have a green dot in all of those apps, and Select-and-Say is working. So I don't think Dragon is the problem—or, at most, it's only part of the problem.

Next, I will try's rebooting the computer and see if that changes anything.

Edit: computer rebooted; Dragon extension enabled; still no green dot in any tab.

It shouldn't be necessary to close Dragon and various other applications before hibernating your computer. We leave everything running in our computer as is, with the exception of turning the Dragon microphone completely off and run this way for about a week before rebooting or relaunching anything. The KnowBrainer command for this function is Hibernate Windows and we have been working this way for nearly 7 years on the same computer.

Do you still have Select-&-Say, noted by the green •, when you dictate into this forum? If you do, the other tabs are simply on non-Dragon friendly websites and there is nothing you can do without a third-party Dragon utility.

Do you still have Select-&-Say, noted by the green •, when you dictate into this forum? If you do, the other tabs are simply on non-Dragon friendly websites and there is nothing you can do without a third-party Dragon utility.

As I said in my previous posts, I usually have a green dot when I dictate into this forum, but right now I don't. Also, I usually have a green dot when I click in the Google search field, but today I don't. I sometimes, very occasionally,see a green dot when I dictate in a Yahoo email window. But today, however, I don't.

Like the original poster, some commands work for me here and others don't. For example, the command “scratch that” works, but the command “click on < link>” doesn't. In fact, none of the Select-and-Say commands work.

Unfortunately, Lunis, I don't have your level of IT support to solve problems like this one when they crop up. I'm all by myself. Since you have full Select-and-Say in Microsoft Edge and I don't, I tend to suspect that my problem boils down to an undesirable interaction between Dragon and some other process on my computer. Now, I could probably spend a lot of time ending processes one at a time and maybe identify the culprit. Or maybe reformatting my hard drive would solve it. But both of those approaches would take a great deal of time and they aren't worth the effort. I'll just live with the problem. It's a little irritating, but it's really not that big a deal.

BTW, just now I dictated “restart it” and Dragon typed “restarted.” When I tried selecting “restarted” to correct it, nothing happened. Incidentally, I have a green dot in the Dragon bar for this website but not for Yahoo Mail. That's not unusual. Yahoo Mail usually doesn't support Select-and-Say.

I've also just noticed that some commands work on this website and other commands don't. For example, I first got “yahoo mail” and when I spoke the command “capitalize yahoo mail”, nothing happened. But when I manually selected “yahoo mail” and gave the command “cap that”, that command worked.

I checked Recognition History to see if the commands not recognized were identified as commands by Dragon. They weren't. There is no X in the command column by those commands. On the other hand, Dragon didn't type the commands as text, either. So Dragon correctly recognized the commands; it just didn't do anything.

First of all, if there is no X in the command column by those commands, that means that Dragon has not recognised them as commands, but as dictation.

Secondly, don't expect all commands to work in any application. As you already found out, a lot of things don't seem to work in Yahoo mail that work on other pages. Contrary to what others said, the Dragon web extension is not something that is either on or off. It works better on some webpages than others, and you may not have the same commands on one page that you get on another.

As Stephan pointed out correctly: If recognition history doesn't show the 'x' in the command column, then Dragon recognized the speech but wasn't unable to find a voice command that's being invoked by the recognized text.

In case of correction or text selection commands, they also show the bold blue border around the preview window and an 'x' in the commands column.

But in order for Dragon to know that "select restarted" is a valid voice command and not just dictation, a matching recognition grammar has to be created first. This grammar contains all the current text in the focused window/text field (doesn't make sense to expect "correct broccoli" when there is no 'broccoli' in the text field).

So you see, this process is highly dynamic and depends on Dragon knowing the exact text in the active control. Other way round: If you don't have the green Full Text Control indicator, your voice commands are limited to generic commands that work independent of the concrete text content (e.g. navigating to the beginning or end of the document has been implemented by simply sending Ctrl+Home or Ctrl+End, resp.).

Other voice commands (like clicking certain links or buttons on the page or switching between tabs) only have to be updated once the page is being reloaded or the set of tabs changes.

With the plethora of controls on all the pages on all those open tabs it's fairly obvious that leaks are likely to happen the longer this goes.

Because such leaks are a real PITA to reproduce, identify and fix (from a programmer's point of view), I think Nuance hasn't made as much progress in this regard as we all would hope for.

Have you tried working with Dragon without loading KnowBrainer? That way you could see if the problem still persisted. If it didn't, then you could start troubleshooting possible conflicts between it and Dragon.

I had an inspiration over a late lunch today. Is it possible that the nuser.ini file could be at the root of this problem? When I look at it, I find the following entries for Microsoft Edge:

[msedge|78.0\Compatibility Module Status] Global Dictation=1

[msedge|79.0\Compatibility Module Status] Global Dictation=1

[msedge|80.0\Compatibility Module Status] Global Dictation=1

[msedge|81.0\Compatibility Module Status] Global Dictation=1

Does msedge properly identify the new Microsoft Edge for Dragon, or should the program be named something else here? I wonder about that because the command “switch to Microsoft Edge” doesn't work, although the “switch to” command works for other newly installed applications.

For that matter, should there be more than one entry for Microsoft Edge?

Originally posted by: dudethatsmyrib I've noticed something weird about DPI 15.3. As I use it, it slowly stops recognizing more and more commands until eventually I have to restart the program. Then it works again (for a little bit). The same thing happens with knowbrainer – sometimes, KB commands will stop being recognized until I restart it. I also had this problem in DPI 14, so I'm disappointed that it's still happening now that I've upgraded.

This doesn't happen consistently. Sometimes I can use Dragon and knowbrainer for a couple hours without noticing any weird loss of functionality. But man, it happens a lot. Anyone have any advice for fixing this?

Q: are you sure that it is that Dragon/KnowBrainer have stopped recognizing commands? Or is it possible that they are just really really slow?

I frequently have similar problems, and just because I like trying to figure out what the problem is, I sometimes go away and make a cup of tea. Quite often what I have said has been eventually recognized, but sometimes after 5 to 10 minutes.

On the other hand, I don't do this every time Dragon becomes… Much less usable… So it is possible that I'm seeing the problem that you have seen, but just thinking it's a slow problem as opposed to a stops recognizing problem. In either case, I have to restart Dragon far too often. I have also found it helps to restart my entire PC, which is something that would happen if they are system-level resource leaks, not just within Dragon.

Originally posted by: MavYou could also try enabling the old preview window. Then you can see a thick dark blue frame around the light yellow preview window every time a voice command has been recognized (in contrast to dictation, where you'll get a thin black border). That way you can see immediately if the command per se has been recognized.

using SnagIT I can see that the border is actually purple, but quite thin, One dark purple pixel and one light purple pixel (antialiasing?)

Black border with dictation … NO

Again using SmagIt I can see no border at all, … Wait, that's not really true, it's more like one pixel gray but not on all edges.

But at least I can see the differenceif I look closely.

In addition there is a bar at the bottom, like a thermometer, gray background with green progress indication.

Q: Is your (Mav's) " preview window"the "results box" that I'm familiar with?or is there some other "preview window"? If so, how do I enable it?

Q: If it is the results box, is there any way to make it more visible? E.g. to scale it up so that I can see these thick versus thin and borders?

I have fairlybig/high pixel count monitors: 2 of 2560 x 1440, 40" and 15"; 2 of 1920 x 1200, 24". I'm used to many programs not really understanding heterogenous displays and scaling. And giving me really small windows that are hard to read.

Originally posted by: jmcvayI tend to suspect that my problem boils down to an undesirable interaction between Dragon and some other process on my computer. Now, I could probably spend a lot of time ending processes one at a time and maybe identify the culprit. Or maybe reformatting my hard drive would solve it. But both of those approaches would take a great deal of time and they aren't worth the effort. I'll just live with the problem. It's a little irritating, but it's really not that big a deal.

Originally posted by: Mav With the plethora of controls on all the pages on all those open tabs it's fairly obvious that leaks are likely to happen the longer this goes. ... Because such leaks are a real PITA to reproduce, identify and fix (from a programmer's point of view), I think Nuance hasn't made as much progress in this regard as we all would hope for.

I don't want to try to do dragons job for them. But if I could figure out which processes on my system were causing problems interacting with Dragon, it might help me avoid doing things that result in such problems.

BTW, some of thebugs that I'm seeing Dragon do make me think that it is not necessarily just a resource leak, but something like a use after free problem. Occasionally I get completely bogus information appearing in things like the vocabulary editor -I saysomething human readableand something like "smm129009"appears.

Of course, in all likelihood, they have all sorts of bugs: resource leaks and use after free and buffer overflow and…

...

Originally posted by: Mav But in order for Dragon to know that "select restarted" is a valid voice command and not just dictation, a matching recognition grammar has to be created first. This grammar contains all the current text in the focused window/text field (doesn't make sense to expect "correct broccoli" when there is no 'broccoli' in the text field).

So you see, this process is highly dynamic and depends on Dragon knowing the exact text in the active control. Other way round: If you don't have the green Full Text Control indicator, your voice commands are limited to generic commands that work independent of the concrete text content (e.g. navigating to the beginning or end of the document has been implemented by simply sending Ctrl+Home or Ctrl+End, resp.).

Other voice commands (like clicking certain links or buttons on the page or switching between tabs) only have to be updated once the page is being reloaded or the set of tabs changes.

Thanks for the insight into how "Full Text Control" works.

It allays my concernabout flipping betweengrammars in DragonFly, if Dragon is doing it all the time.

It is even possible that creating the matching grammars via Python/DragonFly will have fewer leaks than if it is done in Cin Dragon.(I assume the Dragon is written in C.)However, if it is the actual Dragon lower-level code that loads and unloads the grammars that has the leaks, no luck. (I must make the time to do this. Unfortunately, I'm spending far too much time fixing recognition errors when I have created a new profile as so many people recommend doing at the drop of a hat.)

Originally posted by: Mav In case the voice command has been recognized, the application that has registered the voice command should get notified.

This might explain why some commands like "open vocabulary editor" work even though commands being sent to the current application are very slow.

(I'm pretty sure that I've seen that, out of order execution of commands. (I am especially sensitive to out of order execution :-).

It might also explain why some applications slow down while others don't, and, for that matter, why some chrome windows slow down while others don't, since IIRC each chrome window is a separate process for improved security.

---

Thanks to all the knowledgeable folk who have provided advice on this thread. I sure would love to have this sort of problem solved, even though I'm not entirely sure that I have exactly this problem myself; I certainly have similar problems.

I would really like to know whether this problem is solved in the latest Dragon, it is only available as Enterprise AFAIK. Or if changing from 16G to 64G of RAM helps. If they are RAM-based resource leaks it might at least give for 4X more time - or it might make things worse, because the data structures would be correspondingly larger, and possibly full of bogus data that must be traversed.

(Since my old PC just died, I'm probably going to try buying a new PC with 64G before I upgrade to the newer enterprise version that supposedly has far fewer problems than what I'm running now.)

@AG: I think you are being overly suspicious here. The box that Mav talks about is the results box, yes. I would not nitpick about the exact colour of the frame. It's not that Dragon has a dozen of boxes, distinguished only by a tiny shade of purple in their edge. However, you can clearly see the blue edge around the results box when you utter a command as opposed to dictation.

In earlier versions of Microsoft Windows, you could alter the size of the results box by changing the settings for the "quick info" display. I don't think this is possible anymore in Windows 10, at least I've never found it.

To answer your question, I can give a command to click a link in Microsoft Edge, and sometimes it works and sometimes I get strange results. For example, in the screen listing various KnowBrainer forum topics, if I say, “Click Dragon NaturallySpeaking Speech,” it's as though I actually said “Page Down.”

It's kind of a moot point, however. I've given up on Microsoft Edge and switched back to Google Chrome.

Interesting thread. I have also have problems with very slow response at times (20-40 seconds from utterance to text or command recognition). I tried creating a new profile and it worked for a few days and then started up the slow response pattern. The slow response happens with any application and doesn't go away until I reboot my machine (every 3-5 days).

It doesn't make a difference if I use chrome or Microsoft edge except for the loss of privacy. Typically have 30 or 40 tabs open at any one time. (Four user profiles, one to a customer.)

One possible culprit could be interference. The next time your text takes too long to hit the page, try opening DragonPad, dictating a phrase and then say play that back, to listen for possible interference.

Update: I disabled the Dragon extension for Chrome and Edge completely a few days ago. The glitch still occasionally happens to me, but it seems to be a lot more rare. I think.

Also, yesterday, I was working in Excel and after a while the glitch started happening - not just in Excel, but in multiple applications. I restarted Dragon like usual, but it happened again a little while later. Hm. Lunis told me a week or two ago that the Excel Dragon add-in is worse than useless, so I disabled it by renaming the file. Wow! No more problems for the rest of the day.

My new working hypothesis is that my problems have been mostly caused by the Dragon web extension and the Dragon Excel add-in. Phase 2 of our ABAB experimental design: work for a couple days with them disabled, then reenable them and see if I start glitching more often again, then disable them one more time to see if the glitches disappear again. That should pretty much put the nail in the coffin as far as establishing causation